Overview

Passport Entanglements examines the problems with documents issued to Indonesian migrant workers in Hong Kong. Focusing on the politics and inequalities embedded in passports, anthropologist Nicole Constable looks at how these instruments determine legal status and prescribe rights. The book explores the larger role that passports and other types of documentation play in gendered migration, precarious labor, and bureaucracy as they reinforce violent structures on often already vulnerable women. Constable finds that new biometric technologies and surveillance do not lead to greater protection, security, or accuracy, but rather produce new vulnerabilities and reproduce old ones.  

Full Product Details

9780520387997

Table of Contents

Reviews

""Beautifully written and highly accessible, Nicole Constable’s book weaves a powerful dialogue between the anthropology of transnational labor migration in Southeast Asia, studies of documents and passports, and feminist scholarship on entanglements and care."" * American Ethnologist *

Author Information

Nicole Constable is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Pittsburgh and author of several books, including Romance on a Global Stage: Pen Pals, Virtual Ethnography, and ""Mail Order"" Marriages and Born Out of Place: Migrant Mothers and the Politics of International Labor.

Tab Content 6

Countries Available